Gerrard Houllier has just completed his scheduled press conference at Villa Park – well, so far as Sky Sports’ questions go – and said all the right things. He showed deference to our history and pedigree, while talking about his pride and passion in taking this job.
He briefly outlined his ambitions, which included Europe and silverware, while making it clear he intends to build on our existing squad and facilities, not attempt to start afresh with his own
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If you’ve been on the Aston Villa website since Gérard Houllier was confirmed as Martin O’Neill’s replacement you may have noticed that the marketing team have wasted no time in leaping on this new opportunity. If not, you may have received an email. Take the image below which shows the two frames from a 300×250 ad block appearing all over the site.
A good offer, no doubt, click here if you want to get in on it, but am I
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Phil Thompson has explained why he had to turn down Gerard Houllier’s offer to return to coaching in the Premier League and, despite what you might think about him, it’s difficult not to respect him, both for his rationale and his honesty.
Phil Thompson
Had circumstances been different, I would have been delighted to accept the chance to join Gérard Houllier and work with him and Patrice Bergues once again at Aston Villa.
But I had to weigh up the pros and cons
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Gerard Houllier has finally been confirmed as new permanent manager at Aston Villa, succeeding Martin O’Neill. He has resigned from his position of technical director at FFF.
I’ve put together a mini-biography here and compiled his Premier League statistics while at Liverpool here for anyone who is interested.
Gerard Houllier
I am very happy and proud to join this great and historic club. It was a very difficult decision for me to leave the FFF [French Football Federation] but I could not
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I thought I’d pull together a Gerard Houllier mini-biography of sorts while we wait for the inevitable announcement, expected sometime very soon.
Lens & PSG 1982 – 1988
A significant part of Houllier’s playing and early management career took place in Le Touquet, a small town near Calais that many English holidaymakers will know fairly well, but his first appointment of note was at Lens in 1982 for what would be their fourth season in Ligue 1 following promotion in 1979.
Houllier guided
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I suppose it’s a little like the Milner deal now: it seems certain that Gerard Houllier will be joining Aston Villa, it’s just a question of finalising the details. To that end, the latest word from the street suggests the Frenchman will be joining as the new manager, not a technical director, but I’ll leave worrying about the details until we actually know what they are.
In the meantime, I’ve seen one or two people throwing their weight behind Houllier
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Sporting director, technical director, director of football, general manager. Take your pick, all the same thing. I elected to avoid the director of football tag in the headline as it’s frequently been used in England and without success enough that just the mention of the term leads to assumptions of unavoidable failure.
It’s a system that’s been used in Europe for many years though and in places is regarded as the norm. Quite why it hasn’t taken hold in
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All 20 Premiership clubs were required to submit their squads for use in the Premier League today and they were all pretty much as expected, although Luke Moore was left out of the West Brom squad, so we won’t be seeing him playing Premiership football this side of January.
Clubs were required to list up to 25 players over the age of 21 on January 1st and within that list, no more than 17 could be players not classed as “Home
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No one should be surprised that Aston Villa have been able to name their squad under the new “home grown” rules well ahead of today’s deadline as it was as straight forward as it can be. I took a look at the squad back in July and listed 23 players who would have to be named under the new rules. Since then, James Milner and Nicky Shorey left, Stephen Ireland joined, so here’s the 22 player who were
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